Turk Sanderson wrote:Robb_K wrote:Here goes one more try. I finally found the "attachments" button, and the assuring words "drag and drop into message". So. here is what I looked like while working in The Middle East from 1973-1988, from about 1983, when I was 38:
Isn't that picture on the "do not fly" list?
The staple was for stapling it onto my passport, as a visa photo. A visa was required for all "westerners" to get into several of The Arab Countries (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, and Egypt at that time. I didn't need one for Jordan, Morocco, or Tunisia. I worked for The UN as a civil engineer and environmental assessor (water & air pollution), on water and sewer systems, airport, solid waste facilities, oil tanker terminals, industrial installations, and commercial and multi-use developments. I knew this was my best chance to see some of those countries, so, even when there was war or revolutions going on, I managed to get transit visas, claiming just to need to travel through towards a more distant final destination, but, instead stayed in those countries for the full limit (usually 3-6 days), just to see what was going on.
I was working in The Sudan on water and sewer systems for refugee camps for The Eritreans due to their revolutionary war to free themselves from Ethiopia. I went down to southern Sudan, even while they were having their war to break away from Sudan. I was working in Syria while The Muslim Brotherhood was revolting, trying to take over the government. My being arrested at The Israeli/Palestinian border was because Israeli border guards had been alerted that I had spent a weekend in Ramallah (Palestinian capital), instead of taking the tourist bus to Jerusalem to enter Israel. That was because I spent the weekend with the Palestinian project manager (at his parent's house), in our Jordanian office, where I worked. The Israeli security monitors where all Westerners go in The Palestinian Lands. They had seen me cross The Allenby Bridge From Jordan into Palestine on 10 straight Friday mornings, carrying no luggage, only a small plastic bag with a swimsuit, extra underwear and a toothbrush, and decide that I wasn't a tourist. I was merely spending all my weekends with my uncles, aunts and cousins that live in Israel, while I working in Jordan. They thought I was running messages for The PLO.
When I was stopped by the borderguards in East Berlin, they were just harassing young Western tourists. They probably had a quota (requiring them to harass a certain amount. The held at gunpoint by L.A. cops was probably something similar. The L.A. police are trained to "shoot first, and ask questions later". What we all saw on the Rodney King film was no anomaly. That kind of stuff goes on all the time. The cop didn't like my attitude because I asked him why he pulled us over when we had done nothing. I was naive. Coming from benign and friendly Canada and similar Netherlands, I didn't know that USA was a Police State.